Monday Musings: Importance of intentionality in characters.

Hello! The bowling season is now finished and rugby season begins for me. This means that generally speaking I will have a little bit more time available to me. For this week's musings I'm looking at characters in anime and manga and what I think makes a character good or bad. Of course this is really just my opinion and disagreement is very welcome!

So what is it that makes a good character? Intentionality. (yes that is a word, just invented it) What I mean by intentionality is doing things intentionally. This may seem a strange thing, particularly with a character. I am not saying that when characters that are bad pop up in anime and manga it isn't that the creator was not trying hard enough, but rather that everything about the character is made intentionally so as to further the personality of them. So something unintentional would be, "Well I'm going to make this guy carry a big sword." "Why is that?" "Because it's cool dangitt!" The best characters have everything about them is there for a reason. Take Luffy from One Piece for example, his power is that he is a rubber man. It fits him perfectly, because first off, it is ridiculous and goofy enough that he can do funny stuff like blow up into a balloon to deflect cannon balls, or have his belly become huge after eating, and have some really funny stuff. It fits because he is generally a weird and ridiculous guy. Also being rubber allows him to be really reckless a lot of the time, like jumping off of buildings, and be totally fine. If he had another power he would probably be dead just because he is an idiot. Rubber also works well because rubber always bounces back, just like he does. His power fits with his personality perfectly. combining for one of my favorite characters in anime. Another good example is Guts and Griffith from Berserk. Guts is a big dude with a big sword, his style of fighting fits well with his personality. A shoot first and ask questions later relying primarily on his brute strength to win fights. While Griffith is a much more refined personality and fighting style, he uses a beautiful curved sword counting not on his brute strength and raw willpower, but speed precision and skill. Imagine if both characters were the exact same but swapped weapons. They would still be good characters, but they wouldn't work as well. Do the same thing with Luffy and Zoro, what if Luffy was the master swordsman and Zoro was a rubber man. It just wouldn't mesh with the characters.

I may do other posts on the topic of characters and other things that make them good. But for now good bye.

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